Guilt, regret and conscience are feelings everyone has felt, or will most likely feel, and if one does not talk about their reason for these feelings but hide them away and try to forget the past then it is hard to live in the present. This is what the main character in the short story Insignificant Gestures, by Joe Cannon, experiences.
The main character, a middle-aged man, has been in Africa and worked at a village hospital, he tells the story 10 years after he came home, which means it is chronological, and it is written in first person, so we are allowed to hear his feelings and thoughts.
He has very strong feelings and he cannot seem to let go of them. He feels like he has betrayed Celia, the girl that worked for him, because he made the wrong decision: “...Now I remembered: she had gone home early that Friday afternoon because she felt unwell. Celia had died from Meningitis – I could have saved her with an injection of penicillin...” (page 4, line 122-123.) He blames himself, because he, instead of running some tests, sent her to a capital city because he was sure she had brain damages and they could not treat brain damages at the hospital he worked but he had “...Acted on a second hand story from frightened village women who had jumped to conclusions...” (page 4 line 124-125.)
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